I Used to Be Fun­ny – first-look review

With the pre­miers of Bot­toms and I Used to Be Fun­ny at this year’s SXSW, Rachel Sen­nott has tak­en the fes­ti­val by storm with her comedic inge­nu­ity and dra­mat­ic ver­sa­til­i­ty. Both films lever­age Sennot’s sig­na­ture sass and main-char­ac­ter ener­gy, while in I Used to Be Fun­ny writer/​director Ally Pankiw dares to exper­i­ment with the hot­shot actor’s poten­tial of anchor­ing a tragicomedy.

Nail­ing the com­plex char­ac­ter study of a trau­ma sur­vivor pow­er­ing through her messy recov­ery, Sen­nott ris­es to the chal­lenge in Pankiw’s debut fea­ture tack­ling thorny sub­jects around sex­u­al assault and PTSD. Apart from the sex­u­al charis­ma she boasts in her pre­vi­ous works such as Shi­va Baby and Bod­ies Bod­ies Bod­ies, Sen­nott dives deep into I Used to Be Funny’s whirl­winds of fragili­ty and psychosis.

From the out­set, the film wraps a haze of depres­sive episodes and sen­so­r­i­al trig­gers around Sam (Sen­nott), a stand-up come­di­an trapped in a Toron­to rental house she shares with her best friends and fel­low come­di­ans Paige (Sab­ri­na Jalees) and Philip (Caleb Hearon). Though it is not yet clear what exact­ly hap­pened to Sam, Pankiw already cap­tures the quin­tes­sen­tial expe­ri­ence of com­bat­ing PTSD: tak­ing a quick show­er is a chore; ambi­ent noise feels like jump scares; and friends’ attempts at con­so­la­tion induce noth­ing but guilt.

Sen­nott is per­fect­ly cast, por­tray­ing Sam as simul­ta­ne­ous­ly life­less and hilar­i­ous with her default blasé atti­tude and dry-wit humor. Togeth­er with Jalees and Hearon, who are also real-life come­di­ans, they instant­ly make a dynam­ic trio stum­bling through Sam’s woozy anxieties.

Adding fuel to the fire, 14-year-old Brooke (Olga Pet­sa), who Sam used to nan­ny, comes to their doorstep drunk and destruc­tive, accus­ing her of lying – and soon after goes miss­ing. As Brooke and Sam appar­ent­ly share an unspeak­able past, the trio tip­toes around this sen­si­tive sit­u­a­tion while still find­ing humor in their dai­ly routines.

From here, Pankiw switch­es back and forth between Sam’s cur­rent strug­gles with her PTSD and her barbed mem­o­ries from two years ago – nan­ny­ing Brooke while get­ting attached to her bro­ken fam­i­ly. Mean­while, Sam’s omnipresent yet inde­scrib­able trau­ma grad­u­al­ly comes to the fore, as the film’s edit­ing expo­nen­tial­ly accel­er­ates its pace to reveal its mul­ti­tude of sus­pens­es. Echo­ing Pankiw’s non-lin­ear nar­ra­tive, night­mar­ish voiceovers from the inci­dent loop with­in Sam’s trau­ma cap­sules while hate­ful com­ments keep rolling out of her phone.

Pankiw takes up an admirable quest to acknowl­edge the heart­break­ing oxy­morons of over­com­ing sex­u­al trau­mas as mod­ern women. What if trau­ma appears out of place on those who are always sup­posed to be strong and fun­ny? What if our abusers are peo­ple who we care about and empathize with? What if the inter­net keeps remind­ing us of ​“our fault” when all we want to do is move on and forget?

Amidst the chaos of Sam’s down­ward spi­ral into self-iso­la­tion and self-blame, I Used to be Fun­ny still man­ages to shine the light on her only way out of this mis­ery: her unbreak­able bond with Brooke and her head­strong refusal to let one more woman get hurt like she did. ​“Trau­ma­tized and fun­ny as hell” is the hap­py-end­ing tagline that rein­tro­duces Sam onto her stand-up stage, but this state­ment also serves as a pained yet tri­umphant sum­ma­ry of the dif­fi­cult expe­ri­ence of wrestling sov­er­eign­ty away from abusers back to oneself.